Tattva

In 1963 a Buddhist monk sat down on a busy street intersection in Saigon and then burned himself to death protesting the lack of religious freedom under a US-backed regime. In 1998 when Delhi police tried to break up a hunger strike against China’s human rights abuses, a 60 year old Tibetan immolated himself. In March 2008 two monks committed suicide in response to raids of monasteries by Chinese police.
 
Why do people resort to such drastic measures in response to suppression of religion? And why should Hindus be upset that the Indian and Nepali governments are jailing, and in some cases physically beating, non-violent Tibetan protestors? Read the rest of this entry »

This is the first of a 3-part series on Sowmya Ranganathan’s Kailash Yatra, a journey that was a life-changing experience for her. She was 15 years old at the time that she embarked on this 18-day yatra. Below, Sowmya shares her diary account of the pilgrimage. Read the rest of this entry »

The pa varga in Devanagari script(pa fa ba bha ma) has an interesting property. Each letter involves opening one’s mouth. An even more interesting link involves Lord Shiva; each letter of the pa varga is related to one of Shiva’s aspects. A shloka in his praise goes thus:

 paarvatii phaNi baalendu bhasma mandaakinii yutaa |
 apavarga pradaa muurtiH kathaM syaat.h tava shaMkara || Read the rest of this entry »

(Genesis is the first book of the Old Testament. It describes the creation of the Universe, the solar system and the living beings in the course of six days by God. The Hindu view of Genesis is more detailed and is explained here. In a highly condensed form Hindu genesis is represented by the icon, Padmanabha. It tallies with the experimental conclusions of science. How did our ancients arrive at such startling conclusions? Was it by intuition? We are not in a position to give an answer to it.)
 
A few years ago, Americans sent a space craft into outer space carrying a cryptic message to intelligent beings over there. It consisted of a plaque inscribed with the figures of a man and a woman, the solar system and the Bohr -Rutherford model of the Hydrogen atom. If they had been knowledgeable about Hindu mythology, they would have included the Devanagari OM and the Padmanabha Icon. They would have been right on the target. Read the rest of this entry »

The history of India has been whitewashed and distorted, first by European rulers, and after independence by eminent historians of India and their supporters the Leftists, Seculars and self-claimed Progressives of India to meet their own ends. They have painted the pre-Islamic invasion period as a Dark Age and have glorified the Islamic period to be very peaceful and prosperous. Read the rest of this entry »

The lack of fully developed ideology for living and livelihood is a major lacuna for all the right wing political parties in Bharat. I suppose this is true in the case of all democracies in the world. Though unworkable and unrealistic, the theocratic parties have their religious books and leftists have their international standards in the form of Das Kapital and Communist Manifesto. Barring some stern positions in few contentious issues, none of the rightist politicians venture to spell out their ideology about aspects that affect the living and livelihood of ordinary folks. The lone exception to this serious shortfall was the outstanding effort by Pundit Deendayal Upadhyay. Read the rest of this entry »

Sanskrit is oldest language in the world which has retained its structure and vocabulary in the pristine form. Sanskrit is very much a spoken language today and it is spoken by an increasing number of people. Below is the seventh lesson in Spoken Sanskrit.

Read the rest of this entry »